Straightening Out The Line

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It's not the same as John Woo's Land of Destiny!

By Stax

Evidently there has been a huge misunderstanding for a long time now regarding director John Woo's stalled historical epic Land of Destiny (p.k.a. Men of Destiny and The Divide). It has been reported by both the industry trade papers and online movies news sites that Land of Destiny began its development as screenwriter Tom Vaughan's The Line, which sold as a spec script to Propaganda Films back in 2001 as a starring vehicle for Chow Yun-Fat. But according to Monkey Peaches, which has posted a letter from Vaughan, "Land of Destiny and The Line are two unrelated projects and [Vaughan's company, R.O.I. Films] owns the rights to the latter one."

"These are two separate projects. They are not the same script," explains Vaughan. "The Line is a fairly traditional Western with a non-traditional Chinese lead. It takes place around the building of the transcontinental railroad (there are only so many ways a Chinese man makes sense in the old west) and is a story about revenge, friendship, family and moving on. Chow Yun-Fat was attached to star in this project as well as Terrance Chang [sic] to produce along with Dan Halsted. ... Propaganda is no more, and the script is no longer set up anywhere." On the other hand, Vaughan says the separate "Land of Destiny is a drama about a Chinese immigrant working on the transcontinental railroad. John Woo attached himself to direct."

Vaughan explains that when Woo came aboard to direct Land of Destiny, "Yun-Fat and Chang promptly dropped out of The Line and over to Land of Destiny" and that no one in the press "reported of his exodus to the Land of Destiny."

"Daily Variety asked themselves, 'How many Chinese Westerns can there be with Chow Yun-Fat attached that use the transcontinental railroad as their backdrop?' Not unreasonably, they concluded that the two projects were one in the same and then promptly gave me writing credit for Land of Destiny, a project that I had nothing to do with. Throughout the Web, the projects were reported as one and that only the title had changed."

For his blunt assessment of Land of Destiny, check out Monkey Peaches.

Tom Vaughan is optimistic about his project's, er, destiny. "The Line is a smaller film [than Woo's], but more overtly commercial and will have to wait until a another Asian star appears and is interested." R.O.I. Films claims that The Line is budgeted at $25 million and that they've "developed 'The Big Road' draft designed to open up the casting for a non-Chinese lead actor, if necessary."